Джеймс Холдинг - Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 24, No. 3, March 1979

“But how did Aymes get singled out for death and scalping?”

“We did not see his remains, but I suspect Franklin might have erred in choosing him as a courier. Bunch said he was no sailor. The Provost saw through his role and, knowing he could not extract information by torture, passed his finding to The Hairbuyer.”

“But how could Franklin be sure you’d get the parrot?”

“If Aymes fell, then Jibs was to get the bird into safe hands, the lad tells me, and, considering his age, his release was assured. The boy only knew he had a stupid bird. Now, let’s to work. I have what I came for.”

The tide was at the turning, which made the treadle work easier.

“I suppose we’ll have to give the parrot a number, since he’s a top spy,” I chided.

He ignored me with silence, but I could tell he was chuckling. Damn him.

“And put him on the pay books,” I said airily.

More silence.

“And give him an Injun jabber password.”

The bird cawed. “Cawkee-gee.”

Cork navigated in silence.

And I, as usual, persist.

The one-time maiden special who ran in the maiden claimer proved to be there for a reason — the horse broke down on the backstretch and came home on three and a half legs — so I was down another four hundred. One should not parlay losings. Nevertheless, convinced that my bad streak was now at its logical end, I took a limousine to the famous and relatively new casino hotel in Atlantic City and applied the principles of Martingale to roulette, driven by the fact that anyone so famous as to have a system named after him had to have something going for him. Seven turns of the red taught me the probable reason why the professor had been dead for so long.

Things were getting serious so I tried card-counting at blackjack but a blonde disturbed my recall and the cigarette smoke was hurting my eyes. Also, at a certain point the dealer brought in a new deck.

“You can’t do that,” I said to him desperately.

“Is that a law?” he said with an expression so quizzical and winsome that I found myself without a comeback.

Monmouth Racetrack is not inconveniently far north from the famous new hotel casino and so, knowing that matters were at a most difficult pass, I took public transportation rather than a limousine to the shore, arriving there at eleven in the A.M., which gave me two hours and fifteen minutes to work on my specialty, which happens to be the daily double. Someone in the upper grandstand was rumored to have hit the $3,400 double which occurred on this date but I did not make the acquaintance of this person either before or after the race. With seventy-three dollars left, I decided to make one of those perilous leaps into the unknown which have in the past made me known to my friends as a spirited and adventurous man. But hurdles races in the late fall are a leap into the unknown for the wretched horses who run them, let alone the horseplayers. Accordingly, I presented myself in the offices of Louis the Fourteenth on the following day.

Louis is called the Fourteenth, or the Quatorze as he sometimes prefers because of the touch of class, since he is the fourteenth direct descendant of his family engaged in. the same trade. At least this is what the Quatorze claims, and I do not dispute with him, nor does the Quatorze tend to surround himself with those with whom one would wish to dispute. It took me forty-three minutes to get into his offices and it was not worth it, but of course I had no choice. “I will need a little more time, Louis,” I said to him. “It is a simple matter of assembling collections already due me but I am unable to settle the obligation at the present time.”

The Quatorze looked at me unhappily. There is something about the unhappiness of a short dapper man which can be peculiarly unsettling. “The tab is seven thousand dollars,” he said. “Not to forget the change which is three hundred and forty-three dollars and I do not mean cents.”

“I know that, Louis.”

“I would prefer if you would address me more formally. You promised settlement for today.”

“I know that.”

“There have been extensions,” the Quatorze said, biting his lip and looking at the paper in his hand. “Several extensions. The extensions, as a matter of fact, appear to have begun three months and fourteen days ago.”

The Quatorze is a precise man with good help, an unbeatable combination. “I know about that,” I repeated. “It is merely unfortunate difficulties which I am having — family illness, an aged father, difficult debts, business pressures...”

The Quatorze put the paper aside and leaned on his elbows alertly. “You have no family,” he stated, “other than that which has disowned you, including your aged father who lives very well on the coast of Florida. You have no business. Pressures and debts you do have.”

I nodded at him as gracefully as possible under the circumstances. “Your information is very good.”

“In my line of work my information had better be good. I am dependent upon my sources. My sources, however, have let me down in allowing a tab of this size to accumulate. I will have to get some new sources.” Louis picked a small slice of lint from the area covering his kneecap. “I will have to hit my sources over the head and drop them south of here if they do not do somewhat better than they have in your case.”

“I just need a little time,” I said.

“The gambler and the alcoholic do not need time,” Louis said. “I have thought about this deeply. Gambling and alcoholism are an attempt to suspend time with which it is otherwise difficult to deal. I am not a simple man, you know. I am a complex person. I come to this kind of work through inheritance and I think deeply. I want the money.”

“I don’t have—”

Louis put his palms flat on the desk, and raised himself. In this position, he had no height problem whatsoever. “I want the money,” he said. “I will give you until tomorrow morning because I am a reasonable man and the banks are already closed. If the money is not here by the opening of business tomorrow I will have to consult with my sources, who in turn must consult with you. I am unable to speak for them. They are not very dependable but then again they have very literal minds.”

“Louis—” I said, venturing an appeal.

“Appeals are useless,” he said. “Appeals will not work. Pleas for mercy, expressions of reason, mild and sensible requests for delay — all purposeless. It is a difficult world. Time passes, time pressures; it is different coin for an institution, which I am, than for a gambler, which you are. You will please leave now.”

“Now, Louis—”

“You will leave,” Louis said, and at my elbow appeared two assistants whose presence in the room up until that point had been masked perhaps by my own urgency. They conveyed me with stunning speed and force to an antechamber where I was permitted to wipe my forehead and adjust the cuffs of my best suit. “You hear him,” one of the assistants said. “You hear him good.”

“I don’t have to take abuse,” I said. “The fact that you work for the Quatorze does not entitle you to assume his role.”

“You must be some kind of a college graduate,” the other assistant said.

“On the contrary,” I said, “I am self-educated.”

“You are a clown.”

“I am entitled to my dignity.” I added various other things while in the process of making my exit. It is useless to argue with the assistants of the Quatorze, who do not share his relative dispassion or his height problem. In the street, however, the difficulties of my situation came, so to speak, crashing down upon me and fragments of my departing dialogue bubbled to my lips. “Dignity is all we have,” I said, and, “The only way out is to make the extended reach,” and, “It’s all metaphysical,” and so on and so forth. All of this speculation, the outcome of strong self-education, carried me in a half-comatose condition through several hours and several miles of public and private transportation until I reached that place which I must have always known I would reach but of course could not have attempted had I given it conscious thought. A man after all has his pride; even maiden claimers are registered thoroughbreds.